japan running news

The East Asia Half Marathon Championships took place Mar. 29 in Yangzhou, China. Taiga Hirayama won the men's gold medal in 1:02:50 by a margin of 49 seconds over 2nd place. A native of Tochigi, Hirayama graduated from Utsunomiya H.S. and Tsukuba University before joining the Konica Minolta corporate team in 2024. He won the Jan. 25 Osaka Half Marathon in a PB of 1:00:50, then came back 2 weeks later to win the National Corporate Half Marathon in another PB of 1:00:44 on Feb. 8. Kokoro Nakachi (Sysmex) was 4th in the women's race in 1:12:46. First held in 2023, this was the second time the East Asia Half Marathon Championships have been held. Japanese athletes took the men's and women's silver medals at the previous edition, but Hirayama's win was Japan's first gold. source article: https://www.rikujyokyogi.co.jp/archives/203306 translated by Brett Larner

The Osaka Half Marathon took another big step up the domestic half marathon rankings from a mass-participation race run alongside the Osaka International Women's Marathon to one of the country's top-tier races. In the women's race, the debuting Jecinta Nyokabi (Denso) went out fast, only to be run down by veteran Yumi Yoshikawa (Canon AC) by 10 km. Nyokabi faded to 6th in 1:10:41, but Yoshikawa pushed on to a PB 1:09:14 for the win. Rina Shimizu (Noritz), Yuna Takahashi (Shimamura) and Makoto Tsuchiya (Ritsumeikan Univ.) all broke 70 minutes, Tsuchiya taking the Kansai Region collegiate title in 1:09:32 for 4th overall. Everyone in the top 10 who wasn't debuting ran a PB, a mark of how fast the day was even with cold and windy conditions. The men's race went out on sub-61 pace courtesy of Yudai Shimazu (GMO), then got a big injection of speed when Kyuma Yokota (Toyota Kyushu) took off close to 60-flat pace. Yokota opened a 10-second lead by 15 km, but over ...

  In parallel with the Osaka International Women's Marathon , Sunday's Osaka Half Marathon had some big names come out on top in both the women's and men's races. Last year Yuka Ando outran Ethiopian Desta Burka by 2 seconds to set a CR of 1:08:18. Running with a personal male pacers this time Ando went out to better that, on track for 1:08:00 at 5 km and dipping into sub-68 territory over the next 5 km. But after that she started to fade, and especially from 20 km to the finish at least a half dozen other women split faster. Still, she was far enough out front to take the win in 1:08:57, with corporate leaguers Sakiho Tsutsui and Mizuki Nishimura taking 2nd and 3rd in 1:09:29 and 1:09:49. Osaka also served as the Kansai Region collegiate half marathon championships, and the winner of this season's Morinomiyako Ekiden and Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden , Kyoto's Ritsumeikan University , came out strong. The back half of its Mt. Fuji national title-winning li...

The elite field for the Jan. 26 Osaka International Women's Marathon is out, and it's a really short list, especially given Osaka International's World Athletics platinum label status. There's last year's winner Workenesh Edesa , 3rd-placer Mizuki Matsuda , 7th-placer Natsumi Matsushita , 9th-placer Madoka Nakano and 12th-placer Kana Kobayashi , top Japanese Paris Olympic marathon placer Yuka Suzuki , veteran Kenyan-born Israeli Lonah Chemtai Salpeter , the debuting Nanaka Izawa , and that's about it. Workenesh outran Honami Maeda last year, both going under 2:19 and Workenesh getting the win in 2:18:51. She has to be viewed as the favorite. Salpeter has run as fast as 2:17:45 before, but she hasn't run under 2:25 in the marathon or under 1:10 in the half marathon since 2022, so there's not much reason to think she's going to be competitive in a faster race here. Matsuda and Suzuki both ran PBs in their last marathons, Matsuda a 2:20:42 in Berlin ...

  The Chugoku Denryoku  men's corporate team has announced that team member Naoki Okamoto , 40, will retire in January. Born in May, 1984, Okamoto went to Tohaku J.H.S.  and Yura Ikuei H.S.  before enrolling at Meiji University . His 2nd year at Meiji he helped it make it through the Hakone Ekiden qualifying race for the first time in 14 years and ran Hakone at the end of that season in 2005. He went on to run it his 3rd and 4th years too, placing 6th on the First Stage and 9th on the highly competitive Second Stage. After graduating in 2007 he joined Chugoku Denryoku. He was a regular on its team at the New Year Ekiden, winning the Fifth Stage in 2010. But where he really made his name was the National Men's Ekiden, held every January in Hiroshima where Chugoku Denryoku is based. Running it 19 times, he passed a total of 134 competitors in his career there and came to be recognized as one of the event's icons. He also won its Seventh Stage in 2009. In the marathon, ...

Yuka Ando (Wacoal) and Desta Burka (Denso) raced each other to a new Osaka Half Marathon course record, while the men's race saw a very strange apparent DQ of winner Taiyo Iwasaki (JFE Steel). Running with Wacoal male coaching staff member Seiya Morimoto as pacer, Ando set out on pace to go sub-68 with the goal of bettering her 1:08:13 PB from the 2022 National Corporate Half. Burka, who had only run 1:09:31 once in 2021, was right there next to her the entire time as the pace held steady through 15 km. But as Ando started to fade over the next 5 km Burka dropped her and opened a small lead. It looked like the win and CR would be hers, but over the last km Ando fought back and passed her on the track to score the win by 2 seconds in a 1:08:18 CR. "My goal was to beat my PB, but I'm glad I got close," she said post-race. Burka's 1:08:20 was also well under the old CR of 1:09:43 and a PB by over a minute. The men's race saw 42-year-old Mongolian Ser-Od Bat-...

Championship ekiden season wrapped last weekend, but there's still a lot going on this weekend. First up, Keita Sato (Komazawa Univ.), who holds five U20 national records from 1500 m through 10000 m and ran a 59:22 half marathon equivalent at the Hakone Ekiden just over 3 weeks ago, tunes up for February's Millrose Games 2-mile with an indoor 5000 m at the Boston University Terrier Classic Friday night in his first race since turning 20. Sato has only run one indoor race before, a 3000 m silver medal at last year's Asian Indoor Championships, but the indoor NR of 13:27.81 is sure to be a target. The quick transition from Hakone isn't easy, but based on his 27:28.50 10000 m in November, the Asian indoor AR of 13:08.41 could be in range too. Three big road races dominate the horizon on Sunday. First up is the Katsuta Marathon in Ibaraki. Now in its 71st year, Katsuta has a mass participation field of 10000 with another 5000 m in its 10 km. Although it's got a hilly...

The Jan. 28 Osaka International Women's Marathon and Osaka Half Marathon organizers announced the elite fields for both races today. The marathon is all about whether a Japanese woman can run 2:21:41 to steal the third spot on the Paris Olympic team from Ai Hosoda , the 3rd-placer at October's MGC Olympic marathon trials. Only one Japanese woman in the field has done that, Mizuki Matsuda (Daihatsu) with a 2:20:52 in Osaka International two years ago, and to help her try to get there organizers have pulled in Workenesh Edesa (Ethiopia), 2:18:51 in Berlin 2022, Stella Chesang (Uganda), 2:20:23 in Hamburg this past spring, and Sisay Meseret Gola (Ethiopia), 2:20:50 in Seville 2022. 2021 Tokyo Olympian Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) is probably Matsuda's strongest domestic competition at 2:22:32 earlier this year in Nagoya, with Sayaka Sato (Sekisui Kagaku) and Natsumi Matsushita (Tenmaya) more distantly in range. But with Nagoya coming in March with others in pursuit of the ...

It was another busy weekend with marathons in Osaka, Ibaraki and Chiba, a half marathon in Osaka, and post-season ekidens across the country. The Osaka International Women's Marathon was the major one of the bunch, if not an especially memorable race. On a new course that saw the addition of at least two hills and the start and finish point downgraded from the spectacular Yanmar Stadium Nagai to its exterior warmup track, it was basically a race of attrition that saw people fall off the sub-2:20 pace set by the pacers until only three athletes, Ethiopians Haven Hailu Desse and Meseret Gola Sisay and top-ranked Japanese woman Yuka Ando (Wacoal) were left. Desse surged the hardest at 30 km, running on unchallenged from there to win in 2:21:13. Sisay was next in 2:22:12, with Ando 3rd in 2:22:59. More memorable were two mid-race incidents. Just past 5 km, Reia Iwade (Denso) clipped Sayaka Sato (Sekisui Kagaku) from behind and both went down. Sato got the worst of it, bloody in b...

Fresh off the announcement of the Tokyo Marathon elite field yesterday, Japan's first major marathon of the year takes place Sunday with the Osaka International Women's Marathon . Fuji TV will broadcast it live starting at noon local time, with streaming on TVer . With a reworked course that's hillier but which organizers hope will somehow still be faster, Osaka Women's is positioned for a 2:20 race with three women, Kenya's Maurine Chepkemoi and Ethiopians Haven Haile Desse and Sisay Meseret Gola at that level. The top tier of Japanese women, Sayaka Sato , Yuka Ando and Mao Uesugi , all ran 2:22 last year, so it'll be a jump up for them to stay with the front group. There's also a high-potential debut from 1:09:14 half marathoner Sakiho Tsutsui , who so far has looked to be stronger as the distance increases. Sato, Ando and Uesugi have all already qualified for October's Olympic marathon trials, so their being in the race raises the bar for anyon...

Along with yesterday's announcement of the Jan. 29 Osaka International Women's Marathon elite field , organizers have also announced the fields for the simultaneous Osaka Half Marathon . With athletes from 9 countries it's the most international field in the event's history, a welcome sign as other races like the Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon a week later continue to restrict entries to residents of Japan. Osaka Half Marathon Elite Field Highlights Osaka, 29 Jan. 2023 complete field listing times listed are best in last 3 years except where noted Women Zeyituna Husan (Denso) - 1:09:24 (Sanyo 2020) Desta Burka (Denso) - 1:09:31 (Sanyo 2021) Kaede Kawamura (Iwatani Sangyo) - 1:10:17 (Nat'l Corp. Half 2022) Shuri Ogasawara (Denso) - 1:10:25 (Sanyo 2020) Mirai Waku (Univ. Ent.) - 1:10:26 (Sanyo 2020) Yukina Ueda (Daihatsu) - 1:10:49 (Osaka 2020) Wuga He (China) - 1:10:54 (Philadelphia 2022) Hanae Tanaka (Daiichi Seimei) - 1:11:08 (Sanyo 2021) Hina Yanagitani (Wacoal) - 1...

Just about the only mass-participation race not to have canceled as Japan's COVID numbers hit record-breaking levels every day, the  Osaka Half Marathon happened Sunday alongside the Osaka International Women's Marathon . 3,572 people finished the half, making it the biggest in Japan so far this year. 2:06 marathoner Hiroto Inoue (Mitsubishi Juko) ran a PB to win the men's race in a 1:01:14 course record as part of his buildup for a shot at the 2:04:56 marathon national record at March's Tokyo Marathon, if it happens. Chugoku Denryoku corporate teammates Joseph Waweru Nganga , Takumi Kiyotani and Naoki Okamoto did most of the work leading the race, with Inoue not taking over until around 15 km, which he split in 43:22. When he made his break for it Kiyohito Akiyama (Aichi Seiko) was the only one to go with him, but Akiyama soon let go and settled back into a small chase group with Nganga, Okamoto and Akira Tomiyasu (Raffine). Inoue was unchallenged over the final...

Despite Osaka being named to a preliminary state of emergency as Japan goes deeper into its omicron wave, this weekend's Osaka International Women's Marathon and Osaka Half Marathon are going ahead on their traditional public road courses. Osaka Women's is Japan's last remaining purely elite marathon, and with the mass-participation Osaka Marathon moving to the last weekend of February this year and targeting WA platinum label status the writing has to be on the wall for its future. It just doesn't seem sustainable to have this race four weeks before the start of a three-week run of platinum label races, one in the same city, one in Tokyo and one in Nagoya. But for this year, at least, Osaka Women's clearly has the support up top in the local government to keep moving, and that counts for something. Like the 2021 race, despite its name it's a Japanese-only field with male pacers, kind of inevitably on the first point given Japan's ongoing border fortif...

Set to retire after running the Jan. 30 Osaka Half Marathon, Kayoko Fukushi  (39, Wacoal) will publish a book through Kyoto's Iroha Publishing . Its title will be simply "Kayoko Fukushi."  The book will give an autobiographical account of the many achievements throughout her career, from setting multiple national records to four-straight Olympic teams to her unforgettable debut at the Osaka International Women's Marathon where she fell repeatedly late in the race. Contributors to the book include her parents, teachers, and other athletes including her Wacoal teammate and Tokyo Olympian Mao Ichiyama . Publication is scheduled for Feb. 19, with reservations for autographed copies open now via Sankei iD. source article: https://www.sanspo.com/article/20220121-CJ4QVY6WRRLQ3C7NEAZC3DP2MM/ translated by Brett Larner

 On Dec. 22 the Wacoal women's corporate team announced that former 5000 m and half marathon national record holder Kayoko Fukushi  will retire after two final races in January, the National Women's Ekiden on Jan. 16 and the Osaka Half Marathon on Jan. 30. A four-time Olympian, Fukushi won the bronze medal in the marathon at the 2013 Moscow World Championships and is a two-time winner of the Osaka International Women's Marathon. Her debut marathon in Osaka in 2008 remains one of the wildest and most memorable in elite marathoning history. In a handwritten statement Fukushi wrote, "For these 22 years on the Wacoal team I've been nuts about running. I met a lot of people...there've been a lot of tears and a lot of laughs...so many different things every day. It really was an interesting career! Thanks to all of you who've supported me over the years. I really am grateful, from the heart. I'm going to run these last two races just like I always have, a...

Scheduled for Jan. 31, the 2021 Osaka Half Marathon has been canceled. In light of the ongoing coronavirus crisis, after discussion with a variety of involved organizations it was decided that it would not be possible to ensure the safety of the many athletes, staff and others gathered together at the event. The organizers ask for the public's understanding. Translator's note: The Osaka Half Marathon is the companion event to the Osaka International Women's Marathon, of which no decision about its holding has been made public yet. The half has both male and female fields and is run simultaneously with the marathon with a different starting point and course. source article: https://www.sankei.com/west/news/201005/wst2010050005-n1.html translated by Brett Larner

Gather round, y'all, Sunday's  Osaka International Women's Marathon  has a story to tell. It's the next-to-last chance for Japanese women to make the Sapporo 2020 Olympic team. All they have to do is be the first Japanese woman across the line and go 2:22:22 or better, as better as possible to keep the crosshairs that will be on their back at the Nagoya Women's Marathon in March down to a workable size. Three women on the list could conceivably play the protagonist and hit 2:22:22 on a good day,  Rei Ohara  (Tenmaya),  Mizuki Matsuda (Daihatsu) and  Kayoko Fukushi (Wacoal). Ohara, last year's runner-up, has run as fast as 2:23:20 and currently has a provisional place on the 2020 Olympic team after finishing 3rd at September's MGC Race Olympic marathon trials . She's the one who stands to get knocked out if anyone hits the 2:22:22 standard, so while Nagoya might have made more strategic sense, here she is. A 28th-place finish at December's  Sany...

Held alongside the Osaka International Women's Marathon , its companion Osaka Half Marathon has grown from a mass-participation mixed gender event to now feature as one of Japan's top post-ekiden season half marathons. Not being a national team selection event for the World Half Marathon Championships it doesn't get many of the big names, who mostly line up a week later in Marugame, but the fields are definitely not bad. On the women's side, last year's winner Reia Iwade (Under Armour), the fastest female Japanese marathoner of 2019, is back as the only woman in the race to have broken 70 minutes. But she has serious competition from Yuka Hori (Panasonic), only 1:11:05 at the 2018 National Corporate Half but fresh off a 31:38.63 PB for 10000 m earlier this month. 10000 m collegiate national record holder Hikari Yoshimoto (Daihatsu) should also be one of the bigger threats to Iwade after a brilliant anchor run at last month's National Corporate Women'...

Relative darkhorse Fatuma Sado (Ethiopia) outlasted some of Japan's top Olympic hopefuls and her Kenyan competition to win the Osaka International Women's Marathon in 2:25:39. Stellar pacing right on the A-group target of 17:00 per 5 km quickly shook the pack down to the main contenders, Ethiopians Sado, Abebech Afework and Sutume Asefa Kebede , Kenyans Bornes Chepkirui and Eunice Jeptoo and Japan's Rei Ohara (Tenmaya), Kayoko Fukushi (Wacoal), and Natsuki Omori (Daihatsu). Ohara had already qualified for September's MGC Race 2020 Olympic marathon trials, but for Fukushi, running her first marathon since the Rio Olympics, and the debuting Omori, they needed to either clear 2:24 or be in the first three Japanese women after Ohara and under 2:28. Just past 12 km disaster struck Fukushi. Tripping in the middle of the pack and falling, she tore both knees and hands before hitting her head on the pavement. Fukushi bounced up and quickly regained contact with th...